Nicklas Lidstrom’s retirement a devastating hit to Hockeytown

Annika Lidstrom, wife of Detroit Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom, wipes tears from her eyes as her husband announces his retirement from professional hockey playing. Photographed at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Mich. on May 31, 2012.Dax Melmer / The Windsor Star
/ The Windsor Star

Nicklas Lidstrom announces his retirement from professional hockey playing. Photographed at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Mich. on May 31, 2012.Dax Melmer / The Windsor Star
/ The Windsor Star

The family of Nicklas Lidstrom: From left: Adam, Samuel, Lucas and Annika. Photographed at a press conference at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Mich. on May 31, 2012.Dax Melmer / The Windsor Star
/ The Windsor Star

Detroit Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom (R) announces he is leaving the team, as well as professional hockey playing. Red Wings general manager Ken Holland sits to the left. Photographed at a press conference at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Mich. on May 31, 2012.Dax Melmer / The Windsor Star
/ The Windsor Star

Detroit Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom arrives at a press conference to announce he is leaving the team, as well as professional hockey playing. Photographed at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Mich. on May 31, 2012.Dax Melmer / The Windsor Star
/ The Windsor Star

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NEWARK, N.J. — The only better defenceman I saw play the game, Bobby Orr, never got the chance to go out on top. His knees didn’t last long enough, and he limped into retirement after a very unfortunate idea led him to finish his career as a borderline cripple in Chicago.

That’s why Nick Lidstrom’s decision, in his words, to “walk away from the game with pride, rather than having the game walk away from me” wasn’t a sad occasion at all, though there are those in Detroit — general manager Ken Holland and coach Mike Babcock no doubt topping that list — who were plenty crushed to see him make it official Thursday.

Not to mention the Red Wings’ legion of fans who would have wept when the magnificent 42-year-old Swede briefly lost his own famous composure while talking about family and trainers and ushers and “Al, who looks after the ice” at Joe Louis Arena.

Holland has kidded often that the day Lidstrom retired, he’d be going, too, because the GM’s job would immediately get to be about twice as difficult.

He was only half-joking.

Holland will stay, Babcock will stay, but Hockeytown has just taken a punch to the solar plexus — one it knew was inevitable, but hoped wouldn’t arrive for a few more years — and it’s going to take a while to recover its breath, if it ever does, completely.

It may even be the end of what passes for a dynasty in these salary-capped days: 20 seasons with Lidstrom, 20 straight playoff appearances, four Stanley Cups. Without him, do we suddenly find out that the Red Wings are just another pretty good team?

As terrific as scorers Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg are, as promising as Holland’s chances may be of signing Nashville free agent Ryan Suter as a new cornerstone of the defence, the old blueprint will have to go now, because the man who drew all the threads together and led the Wings with impeccable grace and effortless class is gone.

And considering that the last player to be so universally lauded for possessing the same qualities, Jean Beliveau, retired 41 years ago — the year after Lidstrom was born — it might be a long time before we see his kind again.

“Nick is going to go down, in my opinion, as the most valuable player of his era, as one of the greatest Red Wings of all time, as one of the greatest defencemen of all time,” said Holland, who had the same sort of look on his face as Rangers coach John Muckler wore in New York, the day Wayne Gretzky officially pulled the plug.

“Yeah, I had a long conversation with Wayne,'' Muckler said that day in 1999. “I don't think there's a career waiting for me in sales.''

“Our team and our game are losing a tremendous ambassador today,” Holland said, of the defenceman and captain he described as “no-maintenance.”

He had tried to talk Lidstrom into keeping on keeping on. He was still a 24-minutes-per-game stud at age 41 this past season. But Lidstrom couldn’t stand the knowledge that he was not quite the same player he had been.

“I’m aware that some people feel my skills have only diminished some ... and that I can still help the Wings win games. I truly appreciate their support,” he said.

“At some point, time catches up to everyone and diminishes their ability to perform. This year, it’s painfully obvious to me that my strength and energy level are not rebounding enough for me to continue. My drive and motivation are not where they need to be for me to play at this level.

“It’s not that the tank is completely empty. It just doesn’t have enough to carry me through every day. I don’t want to lose that ... I don’t want to say status, but that level of play that I’ve reached. I can’t cheat myself.”

Many of those reading the tributes to Lidstrom today will wonder what all the fuss is about. That’s because his skills and decision-making abilities were so subtle, so understated, so inadequately showcased by the bare glimpses TV provided, he rarely seemed to be playing under stress.

His career plus/minus of plus-450 — playing almost every minute against the other teams’ top lines — is so monumental, it needs to be put into perspective. The next highest-ranked active defenceman, Chris Pronger, is plus-183. After that it’s Zdeno Chara at 143 and Sami Salo at 114.

Lidstrom’s face, as he conducted his farewell Thursday, was unmarked, still boyish, not at all that of an old warhorse, perhaps because in many ways, his hockey intelligence allowed him to play above the game, seeing things develop in slow motion, anticipating flawlessly, almost never misreading a play or putting himself in a vulnerable position.

Yet he was a defenceman who played a significant amount of his career retrieving pucks, facing the glass with forecheckers coming at him from behind.

Like Gretzky in his prime, though, he saw the game so well, he was rarely hit. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t tough. One remembers the 2009 playoff season in which he suffered a bruised testicle so painfully swollen that Holland’s gruesome description of it one evening at Team Canada’s fall 2009 Olympic team camp was enough to make a handful of reporters cringe.

Lidstrom was, however, unfailingly polite and available throughout the ordeal. He even thanked the media Thursday for “being real professional to me. Sometimes you can’t tell everything that’s going on but I’m sure you understand ... but I tried to treat you with respect and I felt I got that back from you guys, so I appreciate that.”

That was Lidstrom.

"We call him the Perfect Human," his fellow Wings defenceman and Swede, Niklas Kronwall, once said.

Edmonton Oilers defenceman Ryan Whitney wrote on Twitter that the game was never meant to be as easy as Lidstrom made it look.

At the GMs’ meeting Wednesday, San Jose’s Doug Wilson called Lidstrom “the standard of how we want people to play the game. Ultimate professional. When we’re teaching young defencemen how to play the game, I don’t think there’s anybody that’s ever been as technically strong as him.

“You don’t replace players like that. You don’t,” Wilson said.

New Jersey Devils’ Henrik Tallinder, at the Prudential Center the day after Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, understood the significance of the day.

“He's been an icon in Sweden for so long. I mean, two decades is a long time playing in the best league in the world,” he said. “In my eyes, he's the best Swedish player we've had over here. No offence to Forsberg and Sundin. Just with four Stanley Cups, seven Norris Trophies, that says it all, I think.”

His seven Norris Trophies tie him with Doug Harvey, trailing only Orr’s eight.

“Just watching him play,” Tallinder said, in a very Swedish way, “you would describe it once ... it's like a symphony.”

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Nicklas Lidstrom’s retirement a devastating hit to Hockeytown

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